


Jack O' Lantern

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bruce is gone and Alfred's a wreck, Depression, Drug Use, Gen, Grief/Mourning, This is just miserable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6335737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither/nor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jack O' Lantern

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry. I don't know where this came from. I just wanted to write a nice story delivering on the massive subtext between Lucius and Alfred, and this happened. Please refer to me by my official rank, Captain Bringdown.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and goodnight.

You can't drink.  
No, that comes later. First, you can't not drink.  
So, you do. Who's here to stop you?  
The liquor cabinet was always to be kept locked. No need, really. Bruce has never been that kind of boy. Still, it was the proper thing to do, so that's what you did. The key's remained on your keyring, unused, for almost two years. It's short and slim, like the first bone in a finger. When you open the cabinet door, the hinges whine, and grind in their settings. A veil of dust is dislodged.  
The first sip is like poison. After so long, it always is. It scours your lips and scorches your throat, mixes with the bile in your empty stomach. The second's only slightly better. The third.  
That's when it comes. Suddenly, you're so warm, and you realize just how cold you've been. Feeling it, now, you would, you find, drag yourself across a field of broken glass for it. How you'd hurt yourself, just to feel relief.  
You can't cry. You're locked up, inside. You try to make yourself cry. You double over, your hand over your eyes. Force your chest into a hiccuping motion. Nothing comes. You finally did it. You broke something inside. Something you never wanted to have, but now it's gone, you feel its absence. That hollow, that void, is wrong.  
After a few nights, you can't not cry. It's like flipping a switch. After few drinks, when you're no longer sure that anything is real, the tears will come, unbidden. And you welcome them. And once they've been let in, they come to stay. First, it's just streams of water, flowing placidly from your eyes. A spring thaw. A trickle of melting snow, from somewhere that you can't see. Soon, though, like a sleeper awakened, you find your body shaking, convulsing as you weep. It's like being sick, the way your body wrings itself out, expelling this poison.  
Soon enough, you're sick, as well.   
By now, you've been sick, you think, in just about every room of the house. That's fanciful trash. There are far too many rooms in this house. You could be sick every night for the rest of your life, and still miss one or two. Christ, so many rooms.  
The alcohol will stop working. It used to take longer than this. Your sleep was once smooth, blank. You slept away half the day. It was like being dead. There is such comfort in just not existing. Now, your slumber is interrupted, fitful, jagged. You wake in the middle of the night, fully dressed, panting, sweating, the contents of the room suspended all around you, quivering like matter in aspic. Your skin is hot. Your eye sockets feel like they've been punched out of shape. Liquid dread crashes down upon you. You're too aware of all of the wounded places on your body. Wounds twenty years old prickle with new pain. Your thoughts are a porridge. How you sleep again, you don't know.  
The locked metal cabinet in the cellar yields many phials printed with all but unrecognizable names. Though, you recognize one. You think of Reggie, and drive the plunger home. When you wake the next morning, you're sick again. The phial and syringe on the bedside table look obscene, like objects of torture or profane pleasure. You cushion the phial in layers of bin liner, place it on the floor, and crush it beneath your heel. You bury the wet mash of drug and glass at the bottom of the kitchen bin. The needle, you dutifully dispose of in the sharps container in the cellar. You take a punishingly hot bath, dress in clean clothes. You spend the day tidying, cleaning up after yourself. Who else is there to clean up after? That night, you're down in the cellar again. You count the phials. Your days are numbered.  
It's like a movie you've seen before. You saw what became of Reggie. But seeing, knowing, remembering, that's different than living it, yourself.  
And you need it, you know.  
You're his servant. You can't go out looking for him. He told you not to, and you do as you're told.  
But you're their servant, too. You can't call the police. The school's used to his disappearing for weeks, months at a time, so there's no worry there. Who else cares? For all of that fame and money, Bruce Wayne, the boy, matters to precious few people in this world. It was, actually, so terribly easy for him to disappear.  
But nothing disappears, not really. You go out, scrape the streets for what you can find. You get lied to, laughed at, told wild stories. You get beaten. Sometimes, you ask the questions just to be beaten. And then, you come home, to the empty house, stick the needle in, and feel less empty, yourself. No one will tell you anything real. You start to think that there never was a boy named Bruce Wayne. That there never were two people named Thomas and Martha Wayne. That you've been living in this house all by yourself, all these years. It was all a dream. Your family. Was a dream. You never loved. You never cared for anyone. Were never cared for. You were a soldier. A killer. Nothing else. Not even a servant.  
There comes a time when you can't drink. The other cancels it out, leaves you a desert. Ever-dry. Unable to absorb anything, for all you pour onto the desert sands. And then, the other runs out. Leaving you paralyzed by nausea, cramps; your bowels turned to water. All pain returning. Everything you thought was gone comes flooding back. Including him. Including them.  
You cry so much you don't know how you're still alive. You don't know how you didn't run out of tears, and begin weeping blood. But your blood is still in your veins, and the tears stop. The sickness fades. The pain diminishes. Leaving you with nothing to do but pick your body up off of the bathroom floor. Run the bath. Step in. Lie there until the water cools. You dress. You walk through the house, cleaning up the messes you made. You find scenes you forgot all about. You don't feel disgust. You don't feel shame. You don't feel anything.  
You can't go out.  
You can't stay here.  
You can't leave.  
Above all else.  
That, you cannot do.  
No one can see you. You couldn't stand to be seen.  
You can't do this. You can't. Every nerve in your body is screaming in objection, but you need to. You need this like you never needed drink or drug.  
You pick up the phone.  
He's surprised to hear your voice. That's when you think of how long it's been since you last spoke.  
“There are things I need to tell you.” You feel yourself say the words, but they don't seem real. “I can't tell you over the phone.”  
“I'll come over,” Lucius says. It's a logical response, but it shakes you. You can't believe he'd suggest such a thing. You can't believe you're about to receive tangible proof that another person exists. Someone who knows Bruce. Someone who knew you. Before you were this.  
“Alfred,” he says, when you meet him at the door. You've been standing there, next to it, waiting for the bell. If you went anyplace else, he might never come. “Alfred. What happened?” he asks, as you reach out your hand to take his coat. You walk like a ghost to the hall closet and hang it up.  
There are no words. For a horrible second, you think that it'd actually be easier to explain if Bruce were dead. There's a word for it. Death is part of life. Everyone understands it. Even in cases of murder, there's really no one to blame. A human killer didn't make a body frangible, temporary. A human killer didn't put breath in your lungs and blood in your vein. He just stopped the clock. It was going to stop one day, anyway. No human can create death. It's always there. In your blood, in your bones.  
Failure is harder to explain. When you do everything you can, to keep one little boy safe, and sane, and whole, and it isn't enough. He goes out chasing the very things you've tried to shield him from- and when you realized you couldn't protect him forever, tried to teach him to fight. You would have done anything he wanted. You would have let him do anything he wanted. He didn't have to leave you to be free.  
Somehow, you've communicated this to Lucius. You don't know how.  
“Call the police,” he says, so gravely, so reasonably. What is it to inhabit a world of such certainty and safety?  
“Can't. Even if they did bring him back, I'd be found unfit to keep him, wouldn't I? I'm not his father. His father might have transferred guardianship to me, but I'm not a blood relation. What rights do I have?”  
You shut your eyes tightly, turn your head away. Your body's always found a way to humiliate you. If you knew that you were still so susceptible to tears, you wouldn't have bothered. You'd never have picked up the phone. But you thought it was over. You thought you were dry.  
“Okay,” Lucius says, bright and strong, “A private detective, then. I can get you some names. No one who works directly with Wayne Enterprises, so the board won't be tipped off. They'll be a small firm, discreet. They won't know his name. They'll just have a description. Places he might go. Known associates.”  
“Yeah, all right,” you say quietly. The sorrow's passed, and now, you're beyond feeling anything. You look at Lucius. He's real, isn't he? You called, and a real person came? This isn't a dream. “Thank you,” you say. Even if it is all a dream, it costs nothing to be polite.  
“I want him back here, safe, too.”  
“Of course you do. You're a good man. You've done so much for both of us.”  
“You'd do the same,” he says. He's so sure. It's like he knows something that you don't know, couldn't know. It's like talking to God.  
“Can I get you a drink?” you ask, patting your pockets for the liquor cabinet key. You've taken to locking the door again.  
“Yes. Please.”  
You lead him into the library. “Yours was a G and T, right?”  
“Yes,” he says, looking pleasingly surprised.  
“A butler never forgets,” you say. You even manage a smile. It's feeling automatic, now. A sweeter, warmer version of that ghostly drifting. Now, if you don't exist, you're not existing with another person.  
“You don't drink on duty?” Lucius asks with a smile. You must pull a terrible face, because he quickly says, “I'm sorry.”  
You shake your head. “No. I don't drink.”  
He sips his. And you want to tell him something. So that he'll know that no fault lies with him. That there's nothing wrong. With him, or with anything he's done.  
“Another?” you ask, when the ice cubes rattle in the glass.  
“I shouldn't.”  
“Don't not enjoy yourself on my account,” you say, taking his glass. “I'll have one with you.”  
“What I would really love, if you have it, is a cup of cocoa.”  
“Cocoa?” you laugh. Involuntarily, you raise your hand to your sternum. You feel your heartbeat against your palm. You drop your hand.  
“Yeah,” he says, and smiles again. You smile back, hoping to make it linger. “It's getting late. It's chilly outside. Perfect cocoa weather.”  
“Cocoa it is, then,” you say, rather less enthusiastically than you mean to, “If you would follow me to the kitchen.”  
It's warmer, there. The light's brighter. But you can see the bruise of dusk outside. It looks as though it might rain. Let him be someplace warm, too.  
You stop looking. You make cocoa. You make two cups. You set them down on the kitchen island, and sit there with Lucius. His eyes are lowered over his cup, like one in prayer, as he blows on his drink. You think: I want to kiss him.  
None of this is real. It can't be.  
He didn't get around to the first sip of cocoa, so you can taste the gin and tonic still on his mouth. Bitter quinine and wild juniper. The taste of howling wind and driving rain. You pull him closer against you. His cheek is warm beneath your hand. His body's warm against yours. You can feel him inhale and exhale. Rough with surprise, then smooth. When you put your fingers to his throat, you feel his pulse there. Maybe you're dead, but he's not. He knew you, too, when you were alive.  
“I'm sorry,” you say. You're not sorry, at all. You'll do it again, once you catch your breath.  
“Well, I won't pretend that it wasn't a pleasant surprise,” he says, “I just don't think that this is the right time.”  
“Oh.”  
“I mean, I don't think you're in a good place right now.”  
“Please.” It's not your voice. It's the moan of a dead man, calling through the twilight. Into the snarl of a night storm. Your life is out there somewhere, and you haven't a hope of finding it. “I'll do anything.”  
He wraps his arms around you. If there were any art or theatricality to these things, this is when you'd break down. When this good, kind man is holding your horrible, decaying body against him. And he's so warm and so vital and so living, and he's been so kind to you, and you feel something for him, deep in the tomb of your emotions. And he knew you, before your life ended. But there are no tears, now. No sobs. No rattle of your bones. Just his heart beating.   
And yours.


End file.
